Murray Hill, N.J.--Nov. 19, 1997--Researchers at Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill), have fabricated the world's smallest practical transistor that is four times smaller, five times faster, and draws 60to 160 times less power than today's transistors.

While Bell Labs and others have built extremely small transistors before, no one has built a transistor this small with all the components scaled to deliver the kind of performance needed for a practical microchip, the company said. The achievement paves the wayfor powerful new integrated circuits that pack many billions of transistors on a single silicon chip, as opposed to the millions on today's chips.

The experimental "nanotransistor" exceeds today's transistors in such measures as how much current flows through a transistor and howmuch a transistor boosts a signal. Future chips based on this technology would consume far less energy, a boon for users of portable communications and computing devices.

The technology could prove especially attractive in digital signal processors, a class of chips used in cellular phones and other communications devices.

Bell Labs scientist and project team leader Greg Timp will describe the achievement on December 8 at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), a leading venue for reporting microelectronic device developments. IEDM is being held in Washington, D.C., at the Washington Hilton Hotel.